Tag Archives: Some

New Zealanders have begun handing in weapons in response to government appeals following the Christchurch massacre, but the gesture has put some squarely in the social media firing line. John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton, decided to give his semi-automatic rifle to police after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday plans to tighten gun laws in light of the slaughter Friday of 50 Muslim worshippers. The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account — most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful and vociferous.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan officials reported blackouts easing in some areas Tuesday, while the chief prosecutor said opposition leader Juan Guaido is being investigated for allegedly sabotaging the national power grid, whose collapse last week has inflicted misery on millions.

Speaking on ABC, John Bolton said the United States has no illusions about North Korea’s capabilities, but Trump remains confident in his personal relationship with the North Korean leader. Bolton’s comments came after two U.S. think tanks and Seoul’s spy agency said last week that North Korea was rebuilding a rocket launch site at Sohae in the west of the country. There have also been reports from South Korea’s intelligence service of new activity at a factory at Sanumdong near Pyongyang that produced North Korea’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.

The jihadist group faces defeat in Baghouz on the banks of the Euphrates, but it still holds remote pockets of land further west and has launched guerrilla attacks in other areas where it has lost control. Baghouz, a collection of hamlets and farmland near the border with Iraq, is the last patch of populated territory Islamic State (IS) still holds in the area straddling the two countries where it declared a caliphate in 2014. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said earlier on Monday they had slowed their assault because more civilians, previously thought to have completely evacuated, were trapped in the enclave, but they vowed to capture it soon.

Trump said he walked away from a deal because of Kim’s demands to lift all U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea in return for the denuclearization of its Yongbyon atomic complex but not others that the United States knows about. In contrast, North Korea’s foreign minister said Pyongyang offered to dismantle Yongbyon in return for a partial lifting of sanctions as a step toward better relations between the nations, technically still at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Before the summit, there were hints Washington was open to declaring an end to the war, some sanctions relief, and opening of liaison offices, a first step toward diplomatic ties, if the North reined in its nuclear program.

The reactions of many on the left to the case of Jussie Smollett prove two important things: 1. There is little racism in America. 2. The Left — white and black — is morally and psychologically impaired.There is no doubt that most Americans on the left, including black Americans, are distraught over the fact that Smollett faked the “racist” attack on him. Apparently leftists, Democratic leaders, and, most depressingly, many of his fellow blacks wish Smollett had been attacked by white racist homophobes.Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), a white leftist, tweeted, “I hope this was not something that Mr. Smollett did to himself, or created.”Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart told MSNBC there has been “an atmosphere of menace and hate” since Donald Trump was elected president, which made “people want to believe” Smollett’s story. Exactly. Capehart, a black leftist, wanted to believe that racists yelling “This is MAGA country” beat up blacks.Another black leftist who writes hate columns for the Washington Post, Nana Efua Mumford, wrote: “I wanted to believe Smollett. I really did.” Again, exactly. Mumford wanted to believe that racists yelling “This is MAGA country” beat up blacks.Corey Townsend, the social-media editor of The Root, a black-oriented website (founded in 2008 by Harvard black-studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.), opened his column on his private doubts that Smollett was attacked as he claimed with the words, “I wanted to be wrong.” Three paragraphs later: “But still, I wanted to be wrong.”This should tell you a great deal about how morally and psychologically sick the Left is. And their reactions prove how little racism there really is in America.Here’s the proof of both these assertions: When American Jews, even most left-wing Jews, heard of the mass killing of Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue, how many were hoping the shooter was truly an anti-Semite, and how many were hoping he was a mentally deranged individual who could have just as easily shot up a church? Or, if a well-known Jew had been beaten at 2 a.m. on a Chicago street, how many American Jews would have wanted the attackers to be Jew-haters, and how many would have wished they were just thugs who wanted money?As a Jew who has been deeply involved in Jewish culture all my life, I am pretty certain the majority of Jews — certainly liberal and conservative Jews, and even most left-wing Jews — would have wished that neither the Pittsburgh synagogue nor the theoretical attack on a Chicago street I conjured up were perpetrated by anti-Semites.Why is that? Why do almost all Jews wish attackers of Jews not be anti-Semites, but so many blacks and so many white leftists wish Smollett had been attacked by racists?Because Jews want to believe there is little anti-Semitism in America while most black leftists and most white leftists want to believe there is a lot of racism in America.And why is that? Because the Left and many American blacks are politically and personally dependent on one of the greatest mass libels in history — namely, that America is a racist country. If just one one of five black Americans woke up tomorrow and announced, “You know, this a great country for anyone, including a black person, to live in, and the truth is the vast majority of white Americans bear no ill will toward blacks (or any other race or ethnicity),” that would end the Democrats’ chances of winning national elections. The Democratic party is dependent on nearly universal black acceptance of the leftist libel of America.And what about the personal? Why do so many black Americans, living in the freest country for all its citizens — and in the least-racist multiracial, multiethnic country in history — want to believe America is racist? That is one of the most important questions all Americans need to address at this time.And there is another one, which I posed in my column last week: Does the Left believe its own lies?